Long Live the Hotel Pennsylvania

Vornado on Monday decided to bail on its investment on retailer J.C. Penney Co. Vornado moved to sell 10 million shares of its Penney stock, more than 40% of its holdings in the retailer, after reporting more than $300 million of losses on the investment.

Also Monday, Vornado Chairman Steven Roth told investors at a Citigroup Inc. conference that the company was abandoning its longtime plan to replace the Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan with an office tower. The company, rather, has finalized its plan to invest in an upgrade of the downtrodden hotel across from Madison Square Garden. The move is likely to involve bringing in a new operator and partner.

"We're not going to tear down the hotel," Mr. Roth said. "In fact, we're going to invest in it aggressively and try to make it into a really profitable, really good hotel for our purposes."

—Eliot Brown

Food Fight

The battle over CommonWealth REIT that erupted last week got so intense that some investors were forced to miss their lunch.

On Feb. 26, the previously low-profile company, which controls more than 400 office properties in second-tier cities and suburbs, was thrust into the limelight when Related Cos. and Corvex Management LP announced they had purchased nearly 10% of the company and offered to buy the remainder.

That same day, CommonWealth and its underwriters on a planned equity offering had been planning an investor lunch at the posh Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan. The equity offering is controversial because Related and Corvex opposed it.

The lunch was moved from the Four Seasons to a smaller affair at the InterContinental hotel. A CommonWealth spokesman said the company moved it out of concern that some attendees would be disruptive.

Luxor Capital Group LP, a large shareholder that previously suggested changes to management, was uninvited to the lunch, according to court papers filed this week by Luxor as part of a lawsuit against CommonWealth's management. But that didn't stop the hedge fund. Luxor alleged it went to the InterContinental anyway and was "blockaded" from entering.

A spokesman for CommonWealth didn't respond to a request for comment specifically about Luxor.

—Eliot Brown

Celebrity Sizzle

A 5-year-old technology company that provides information and social-networking services to the commercial real-estate industry is planning to use celebrity to add some sizzle to its new real-time data-mining service.

CREOpoint Inc. is planning to sell subscriptions to 300 online "channels" that track what's online about a wide range of commercial real-estate topics. The service, named myCREOpoint, tracks about 10,000 online sources and uses filtering software to make sure only commercial real-estate information is selected.

Most of the channels are on such subjects as green buildings or initial public offerings and will sell at prices ranging from $4.95 a month for one channel to $69.95 for 30. But CREOpoint also is offering a "a celebrity pack," which tracks 11 big names like Donald Trump,Sam Zell and Jonathan Gray, head of real estate at Blackstone Group LP.

Jean-Claude Goldenstein, CREOpoint's chief executive, said there's high demand for news about these industry leaders. "Psychologically, everyone wants to be one of those guys," he said. "People like to follow the money."

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